When you're ready, there's nothing left to do but wait

All I've been thinking about, ever since I saw those posts over at the Godmother's blog, was getting ready for the pandas. I've never done that before, for any other expansions. Back in BC, I managed to get two max level characters by the time WotLK came out, but I didn't have a plan. I wanted to play my mage, and that's what I did. I had almost no gold to my name, because I'd spend it all on professions and pets.

But in WotLK, I leveled a shitload of alts. I gave them professions, and today, I have all of them. On a single server. Which means I can farm for gems, enchants, and everything I need instead of buying it. It makes a huge difference. When Cata was released, I didn't stockpile gold. I didn't farm until my fingers bled. I just waited. And blew all my gold on obsidium ores to level Jewelcrafting when the expansion launched. But this time, I'm pretty much ready. All thanks to the Godmother and her precious advices.

Most of my characters's professions are maxxed, and they have enough mats to gain five skill points from both their primary professions when MoP launches. Except the gathering ones. They all have a nice little nest of gold, plus some more stashed on my banker alt. They all did 21 dailies from Tol Barad plus the cooking and fishing dailies from Orgrimmar, for a total of 23 dailies to be turned-in as soon we can get xp again.

I've cleaned all my character's banks and bags in order to make room for all the new stuff, and dumped everything in the AH, making some decent profit in the process. My personnal guildbank was full to capacity with herbs and ores and leathers and enchanting mats until recently. I had planned on putting it all on the AH next week, in the hopes that some pandas might need it for their professions, but I used most of the ores I had to level engineering on my death knight, and my boyfriend suddenly decided he wanted an enchanter/tailor warlock, so there went most of my cloth and enchanting mats. Which is fine. More professions, the better!

I did have a moment of panic a couple weeks back when I realized that patch 5.0.4 meant cross-realm zones were becoming a reality. No more farming for hours alone in a lowbie zone. Which is a shame, because I really enjoyed that. So I did what I had been putting off for weeks and I finished all the farming I wanted to get done before the patch hit.

I had a lot of fun preparing for the big day, and I feel as ready as I can be to welcome the pandas and explore their world. It's really exhilarating for me to feel so connected, so focused on a precise goal. I used to just let things go, and even though I was excited for previous expansions, this time it feels different. It's even better. I just hope I'm not getting my hopes up, with expectations so high that they can't possibly be met.

I'm anxious to work on my professions again and craft new items, pick new flowers, cook new foods and kill new enemies. There are five days left before the gates open. And it's getting harder and harder to be patient.

Luckily, I still have Tides of War to read before Tuesday.

The Mists of Pandaria Bucket List

In an effort to pass the time until next Tuesday, I've updated my bucket list with new in-game goals. The list is massive, and it's still missing some things I wish to do in the next, well, two years most likely. It's a work in progress.

I want of course to level all my characters on the main server to 90, but I am not necessarily in a hurry to do so. I've picked the order, more or less, in which my main characters will be leveled in the next couple of weeks/months.

First off is my mage. She will be the first to set foot on new territories, and explore Pandaland. Since she does not have any gathering professions, her alchemy will have to wait. Although, as far as I know, cloth is fairly easy to come by, so her tailoring will benefit from this early on. 

The hunter is next in line. I won't be able to work on her jewelcrafting for a while, but since she's an enchanter, she can disenchant gear she doesn't need. I have a list of pets I want to tame for her, and will be working on that as soon as possible.

The herbalist/scribe druid, miner/blacksmith pally and skinner/leatherworker shaman will follow soon after, in order to gather the necessary mats to work on most crafting professions. I will also have a dedicated gatherer character out there (with mining and herbalism) as soon as possible, but it is unclear at this time whether that will be my priest or my rogue.

I have several more characters that will require my attention, but they will have to wait. Oh and I have to fit "start a monk" somewhere in there as well.

In the bucket list there's also titles I want to get, rep I want to gain, professions I want to max and much much more. I feel it is still incomplete, so the page will most likely change throughout the expansion. There's just so much I want to do! It's all so exciting. I suspect the Tillers farm, the pet battles and the rep grinding with various factions will keep me busy for quite some time. And I can't wait!

The final countdown

One short week left before the Pandas arrive. One short week which I suspect will seem to last an eternity.

Until then, the flailing will go on overdrive. On Tuesday I will be running Kara again in the hopes of scoring the belt I've been after for a couple weeks now, the one that matches the Aldor Regalia. Other than that, I'll be naming more pets, learning my last glyphs recipes through the Northrend Inscription Research, leveling the rogue some more, hunting some last minute transmog items, and reading the Tides of War novel in order to try and make sense of the Theramore's Fall Scenario, which I will keep running on a couple characters after I've read the book. 

At first I was very disappointed by the scenario, but I believe that can be explained by too high expectations on my part. I, like many others, was expecting some kind of big event like we've had in the past before new expansions were released. I thought the Theramore's Fall Scenario was going to give some sort of introduction to the new expansion. But that was never the intent it seems. The scenario in itself is fairly entertaining, even though it is quite short. It took me and two other dps about ten minutes to complete it.

We killed alliance people, we set ships aflame, destroyed tanks and released a prisoner from the keep's basement. Who was that prisoner? Why was he captured? Who started the hostilities? Why are we attacking Theramore? I don't know. There were no indication of what was going on, or if there was, I missed it.

Some people on Twitter seemed to think that those of us who didn't read Tides of War had no way of knowing what was going on, which doesn't make sense to me. The game in itself should give us a minimum of information to help us make sense of what we're doing.

My point is, in my opinion, a big event like this deserved more than a 10 minute mini-instance like what we got today. But maybe that is only the tip of the iceberg. Time will tell.

Let's see what happens

After joining SiB last week, I seriously considered transferring some characters over to their server. I've started a draenei mage over there, and it's slow as hell without heirlooms. But since it was a faction change plus a server transfer, I decided against it. Also, I was stressing a bit over the fact that I couldn't possibly take all my family of alts on the new server, so I'd have to level all the professions I'd need all over again. Now that I've made my decision, I feel a lot better. I'll keep leveling the mage casually, hit 85 before or after MoP is live, and maybe, eventually, I can raid a bit with them if they'll have me. If not, I'll just hang out and chat, because those people are awesome.

In other news, on the Horde server, the BF and I still don't have a raiding guild. We're both in our vanity guild, just enjoying the perks and leveling/gearing characters until the big day. September 25 is two weeks away now, and we've decided to wait before even looking for a guild. We have absolutely no idea what we want to do, and are in no hurry, even though we both want to eventually raid again. We've talked about starting panda monks, or leveling at least one of our 85s to 90, or even start something else completely, like a rogue for me and a druid for him. (Yes, yes, I did create a rogue, don't look at me like that. Let's just see what happens.) I kinda want to rush a couple of 90s as soon as possible so we can queue for the Brewfest boss which is coming on the 28th or 29th if I remember correctly. But whatever we pick, I know it'll be fun. Exploring Pandaria and the Panda's starting zone will be lots of fun, I'm sure. I'm done with my all character's UIs and they all have at least one viable spec. They're all ready to have new adventures and discover new wonders.

*Edit: Corrected typo.

Smells like Pandas

In less than three weeks, the Pandas will be here. And in less than two weeks, we'll have access to the Theramore event. /squee

It's almost here, guys. We can almost smell it. New expansion, new world to explore, new race, new class. We're gonna need more coffee, chief. But until then, there's some things I must do. I've been very busy just relearning everything so far. Now, I need to make sure everything is ready.

I had planned on doing a full post about my bucket list and all, but I don't think it's necessary. (I mean, if you're curious, you can just go check out my Bucket List page.) I've done most of the things I wanted to do before Cataclysm ended. The things I didn't are now on the MoP Bucket List. There are only a couple things I need to take care of in the next week or two :

- Finish spec'ing and glyphing the DK, Druid, Paladin, Lock and Warrior. I'm almost done with the warrior, but the others need more work.

- Finish adjusting everyone's UI. Most characters are playable, but some need more tuning.

- Do one more round of cloth farming in TB with a potion of treasure finding.

- Get 2 more mounts. So I can get the dragonhawk! So pretty!

- Make some missing glyphs for various characters. Only a couple glyphs missing here and there. 

- Name some of my pets.

- Level the alliance mage to 85.

Since I joined SiB last weekend, I started leveling a mage to eventually raid with them. I haven't decided yet if I'll transfer one or many or any characters at all to this new server. But just the thought of leveling alts and professions without gold and heirlooms is discouraging. I have plenty of mats on my horde server. I just don't know what I want to do, at this point. But the guild is worth it. I just need to decided whether I want to pay real money and choose the easy way, or just start over from scratch. Decisions, decisions.

That patch better be really entertaining

I haven't posted in a while and this bugs me. But I haven't exactly been doing exciting stuff in game in the last week. It's only been farming and questing, doing dailies in TB and farming some more and then fishing, and then some more farming. After reading this post from the Godmother, I took my skinner shaman extraordinaire to Vashj'ir where she skinned her little troll heart out. I had been farming cloth in TB with the potion, but I hadn't done any other kind of farming. It was pretty fun, and I got lots of goodies. It was a real shark carnage.

There's still some stuff I want to get done by next tuesday. I want to farm some more herbs, ores, cloth and leather. I want to get my priest to 85 and max her professions. I want to do dailies on all my characters (there are two left, including the soon to be 85 priest) so I can turn them in first thing when I log online on September 25th. 

But I just can't bring myself to do it.

Real life is being weird lately. Mad and I decided to have a baby, so I stopped taking the pill a couple days ago and my body doesn't seem to like it one bit. I cry for stupid shit, I have sudden and terrible headaches and I'm just really really irritable. So hopefully, this changes soon and I can come back to normal. Because I hate being like this.

So lately everything in game feels like a chore, and I just have no patience for any of it. So I do nothing. I spend my evenings watching Fringe and stressing about the fact that the priest will never be ready on time. But I just don't especially enjoy questing as a shadowpriest, and I can't even queue for dungeons yet. So I gather herbs and ores and level very slowly. I hope the patch will bring back some interest for the game, because I just feel really bored with it right now.

In the meantime, Mad and I plan on playing some Diablo3 together this weekend, because I still haven't tried it and I want to play a game with him. (He gave up on the rogue he was supposed to level with me on my priest -.- ) I was excited for D3 when I first heard of it, but then it came out and I was busy with WoW and just never installed it. I guess now is the best time to do just that.

Many yellow dots, handle it!

Look at all the shiny pretties.

The last week has been pretty productive in many ways. 

My priest is now level 69. Mad and I chain-dungeon'd our way to 68, then went questing in Borean Tundra for a while. Now that we can queue for UK, it's back to the dungeons! I loved the Outlands dungeons, but at 68, all you can get is Sethekk Halls or Old Hillsbrad, so we decided it would be faster to just quest a little. 

I've also picked her professions. I hesitated a lot, thinking I might make her my second tailor, and fourth alchemist, but then I read these posts over at Just my two copper, and decided I didn't need a second tailor, but should definitely consider making a "pure gatherer" character. At first, I didn't want my priest to be a miner and an herbalist, as I prefer my druid for herbalism and my paladin for mining (for flying form and crusader aura respectively), but it just made so much sense to have both professions on one toon, for faster farming, that I did just that. 

Leveling mining and herbalism at the same time is both awesome and overwhelming. It's nice to see all those yellow dots all over the place on your mini-map, but I was always afraid I'd miss some. At some point I decided to just stick to the routes I found on WoW-Professions, and not just follow all the yellow dots in random directions. I've leveled both professions pretty fast, and it's been fun, but now I want to wait for level 70 so I can buy a faster flying and speed up the process of gathering in Outlands and Northrend. Slow mounts are slow.

I've also cleaned out the transmog tabs of the guild bank and was able to reduce it down to one tab. The rest as been sold, disenchanted or is in my bank alt's bags, waiting to be put on the Auction House. With the ores and herbs I've gathered, I've been able to help Mad with his engineering, stockpile enough herbs to level alchemy on my future monk, and put aside enough ores and herbs in the guild bank for future glyph needs, or simply to put on the Auction House once MoP is here. I also have a tab full of various cloths, which will be used to make bags for all the new pandas, and also to be put on the Auction House in a couple weeks. Hopefully, I can make a decent amount of gold out of it.

I want to try and finish everything before September, so that I can have at least three weeks free of any farming or questing before we start all over again with the gathering and questing and grinding in MoP. 

Which leaves me about three weeks to get my priest to 85, max her professions, gather everything needed for various professions (For my monk's and a few of Mad's characters. Because he's such a slacker when it comes to his professions.) and max my warrior's fishing (because I'm also a slacker).

Hopefully by then the patch will be live and we'll have some new things to play with while we wait for the pandas. I'm hoping the patch hits either on the 21st or the 28th, more or less a month before the expansion. After that there will be much messing around with the new talents, figuring out how to spec each of my toons, and explore all the new changes. I expect there will be some last minute stuff to be done, like squeezing in some quick achievements, hunting down a few more pets, grinding for a few more mounts, or updating addons and such. And that's fine.

25 slots is not enough

I read this post today on Lae's blog and for a second, I had a "oh shit!" moment. My hunter's stable is pretty much full at the moment, with twenty-one pets total, which leaves only 4 slots for new ones. I even have a whole page for my pets. But with the pandas are coming a shitload of new skins and brand new types of pet you can tame, with only 25 slots available, and my first thought was : I'm so screwed.

Something had to be done.

I have all nine spirit beasts in my collection, and there is no way in a million years I'm letting any one of them go. I also have a couple rares I'm very fond of, which I will be keeping as well :

Terrorpene

Deth'tilac

Sambas

So that makes 12 pets I absolutely want to keep. Which leaves 13 spots. 8 of those were already occupied, so I went and tried to see if I couldn't get rid of some of them. I came up with the following:

- The wolf that hasn't see the light of day in months (if not years) has to go. 

- Same with the rare blue Fox from Loch Modan. It's on a 90 minutes cooldown, so if I ever change my mind, it wouldn't be too painful to get it again. 

- The bear I used to keep as a pocket tank can also be abandoned. Since in MoP we can turn any pet into a tank, I can use another model for this task. (Arcturis or Terrorpeme comes to mind.)

- The purple-ish cat from Winterspring (the one that matches the Alliance Wintrerspring mount) has to go as well. 

- The Core Hound gets to stay, if only for the ghetto Bloodlust.

- The dragonhawk can stay too, in case we need the +8% spell damage debuff.

- Same for the Devilsaur and his 5% crit buff. Unlike the wolf, I really love my devilsaur. I don't use it a lot because I usually take Loque'Nahak when I play BM, but I love him too much to actually abandon him.

The only pet I'm keeping only for sentimental value is Humar the Pridelord.

Back when my boyfriend Mad still had a hunter, he had only one pet, and it was Humar the Pridelord. Back in BC, he camped this rare for days before he finally got lucky enough to not get it stolen or killed before he could tame it. When Mad deleted his hunter a while back, I went and tamed Humar. I even named him Leonidas, just like Mad had named his. So unless I really have to, I won't be abandoning this pet.

Which leaves me with sixteen pets, and nine available slots for future companions.

Thanks to Petopia, I've been able to determine that when MoP is released, I will need to tame a Quillen, because they will let us resurrect dead players in combat, which could really come in handy. I might get a Water Strider too, for his Water Walking ability, and for his Spell Power buff.

I also want a goat, just because they are so frickin' adorable. 

Image from Petopia

And I must get this cat model, because it just looks too damn cool : 

Image from Petopia

I think it's a rare model, but I don't care. I must have it. At the very least, I will try to get another Siberian Tiger, in a different colour, like the black one perhaps.

If I ever raid as a hunter, I will try and get more pets that offer useful buffs and debuffs, but until then, I will tame rare and/or pretty pets, because that's just what I do.

Nothing exciting here

I don't have much to talk about lately, mostly because I don't do anything particularly exciting. I've been running Karazhan to try and finish my mage's tier 4 set, with no luck so far. I managed to bug the mount boss, so that was stupid. I will be going back this week, and hopefully not fuck it up again. I've also been leveling a priest, to play with Mad's rogue. We'll be starting Outlands soon, which I always find fun. Healing Outlands dungeons is something I enjoy a lot. Except for Ramps. Because that's all you get for what feels like forever. 

the Priest and her own little
Personal World Destroyer.

And of course, I've been doing some more bank/bags/guildbank cleaning, and selling stuff on the Auction House. I have way more stuff than I thought, and I'm making some profit out of it. I still haven't touched the "transmog" part of the guildbank (two tabs), as I want to make sure Mad and I don't need any piece before I start selling it all away. 

I want to be as ready as possible for the new expansion, but that is hard to do, since I also want to remain as spoiler free as possible. I'm sitting on a nice amount of gold, and I got some nice starter kit for my future monk, stashed away on a toon I will delete afterwards (enough gold to learn professions and buy all bank slots with some extra, eleven bags, agility and intellect leather heirlooms, lots of different kinds of cloth for a nice first aid boost, a skinning knife for her skinning profession, a fishing pole, some lures, and some transmog gear. I haven't decided on her second profession yet.) Apart from farming stuff for gold and hunting transmog items, I'm pretty much done with the stuff I wanted to get done before the end of Cataclysm. Now we play the waiting game.

In other news, yesterday, it was announced that Star Wars : the Old Republic will have a free to play option starting in November, and that really makes me happy. I really enjoyed playing Swtor for a couple months, but it wasn't WoW, and I ended up not even logging on for weeks at a time, so I didn't feel like paying for a game I wasn't even playing. So this news really is awesome to me. Of course, we'll get limited access to a bunch of stuff, like the dungeons and PvP stuff, but that's fine. We also won't be able to raid, as that is reserved for people who pay their 15 bucks a month. I guess to the people who are already playing and paying, it's not such a good thing. I feel for them, but it will allow me to play a game I love. I really enjoyed the leveling experience. The class stories are really fun, and I kinda miss it. I don't even want to raid, or do the dungeons, or PvP. I'd even be happy just playing it as a single player game, without access to the auction house or group quests or anything like that whatsoever. It really is a great game. Just not enough to justify paying 15 bucks a month, in my opinion. Your mileage may vary. 

Two months of torture

So we're getting MoP in exactly two months. Since it's coming in the middle of the Brewfest, I'm guessing the holiday boss will not be dropping the new gear. Which sucks really, but hey, there's always next years. Unless of course Blizz postpones Brewfest to a later date, which I don't think they will do. I've been disappointed in the past to see holiday boss still drop level 80 shit when the cap was 85. Can't remember which one it was, though. But, we might get lucky with Hallow's End, which comes a little more than three weeks after launch. Who knows? Brewfest and Hallow's end are my favourite in-game holidays, so I'm excited for it, no matter what kind of gear their holiday boss drop.

I'm done with most of my bucket list, except for Loremaster stuff which I kinda knew I wouldn't even touch. It was more of a "I hope I can get motivated enough to actually do it if I put it on my bucket list" kinda thing. Like I thought that I'd go "I said I'd do it, so I have no choice!" But no. I'm more lazy than proud, apparently. So there, I didn't do "everything" from my original bucket list, and I'm fine with it. The bucket list in itself has changed quite a lot over the weeks, but I think I'll make a post just for that in the upcoming weeks.

Now's the time to finish the couple things I have left, like level archaeology on the druid, level fishing on the warrior that just now came out of retiring, and maybe get some more gear for the freshly 85 lock. I will also be farming a bit or even run a couple dailies to make some extra cash. I'm quite happy with the gold I have now, but a little more can't hurt. I'm sure Mad will be asking for gold once he sees something he can't afford. XD

So now that we have a date, I can make plans. I can have Mad take a day (or two) off at work so we can play as much as we want when the game is released. Superfluous stuff like eating and sleeping will have to be taken care of in between leveling sessions, and I want to try and figure out how to do that in a "healthy" way while keeping the game time to a maximum.

When WotLK was released, we woke up early and went to the store to get the game. Then we installed it. Then we played for an hour or two before we had to leave. Me for shcool, Mad for work. It sucked. I thought about the game all day. (I have no idea how I passed my exams that semester.) When Cata launched, we had bought the digital copy a couple days before and I think we had downloaded some of it already. (Maybe?) Mad went to bed at like 7 the night before, so he could wake up at launch time (3 a.m. for us) and play until it was time for work. Lucky for us, there was a huuuuge snowstorm that night. So in the morning, it was like "Boss, I can't come in, I'm snowed in!" Which totally worked. We played for a couple more hours, then took a nap, ordered some take-out when we woke up and played, played, played. It was fun, but it was also very lucky.

This time around, I want to make sure everything goes smoothly. We will most likely buy the digital copy before the launch day, and download as much of it as we possibly can. (If such a thing is possible. I can't remember.) I think we will also try and get to bed early and wake up at launch time, so that we can get started right away. When we get tired, we can take a nap, but I'm pretty sure we can get at least a level or two before such a thing happens. As for the food, there will most likely be ordering some chicken or something, as we probably won't feel like cooking a meal when we can be leveling! Maybe we can stop long enough to put a pizza in the oven, but not much more than that.

I also have to figure out in which order I want to level my characters. It depends on a couple things. Whether or not we get a way to make our alts fly right away in Pandaria or not (kinda like the book we could buy in WotLK.), and which professions I want to work on first. I know I've already said in a previous post that I'd level them in this order, but I didn't really think it through. It's more or less the order in which I prefer my characters rather than an actual optimized plan. But whatever plans I make - about anything - will probably change. I might decide to level my paladin to farm ores, and then I'll feel like playing my warrior instead and I'll just play it, ruining the plan. But making plans is fun, and it's the only thing I have left to do while waiting.

Oh, now I'm all excited. And I gotta wait two months. This is torture.

The world needs more Taurens.

I've been so terribly bad this week. No posts in over a week has never happened before. But then again, I've only been blogging for three months.

I spent some time this week getting the warlock to 80. She's been gathering rested XP ever since and will keep doing so until I feel like I can stomach Hyjal again. The DK is now running Magister's Terrace daily for a chance at the White Cock, as many call it. Not that I find this model particularly appealing, but more mounts is always good. My boyfriend's DK hit 85 this weekend and we are now in "run all the dungeons" mode. We've both got some gear out of it, and will most likely be able to hit the Hour of Twilight heroics soon. 

The mage has started doing some quests in low level zones in order to reach 3000 quests done and get The Seeker title. Yes, I'm that bored. I probably won't go as far as getting the Loremaster, but who knows. My goal right now is to knock out 750 more quests (probably while watching TV shows on my second monitor). That should keep me busy for quite some time. 

Also, I've created a second paladin, which will act as a banker. I've decided to level her to 40 so that she can get both her ground mounts (moar mounts!) for quicker travels from the bank to the auction house. Time is money, as they say.

I'm also thinking about creating an undead priest to do the quests in Tirisfal Glades and Silverpine Forest with. I'm still not sure if that will stick or if I'll change my mind. It's a pretty shaky plan to start with, but I've been wanting a priest on this server for some time now, and I don't see why I shouldn't roll one. At least, it's something to do until the Pandas get here. (Get here faster, dammit.)

I've also decided to level archaeology again, this time on my druid. As I know for a fact I'll want to get all my toons to 90 come MoP, I think it wise to find other means to reach said goal other than by questing. I reckon after I've done the zones on three or four characters, I'll be happy to do some digging and herb picking to break the monotony.

Yes, more achievements. And some fishes too.

The weekend has been pretty busy and productive for my characters! 

The lock reached level 75 last night and finished leveling engineering! Next month's Darkmoon Faire will give her her last five alchemy points, and my paladin's last three blacksmithing points, as I'm too lazy to farm more mats. I've farmed enough in the last couple of weeks that I'd rather wait a whole month to check that off my bucket list rather than farm it myself. Lazy Lyr is lazy.

I also maxxed out fishing and cooking on three characters Saturday night, which was both painful and fun. I fished mats and then cooked them, and it was nice, but the sun had come up when I hit 525 on the last character, and I only then realized what time it was and went to bed. 

Today, the mage got some easy achievements (she hadn't finished Classic Dungeonmaster before tonight, how weird is that?) and then queued for a BG and got her first Arathi Basin victory. I know, it's sad. I did have this achievement on my hunter, but that just shows how much I don't PvP. Despite my mage being my oldest toon, she didn't even have that. Anyway, all those achievements scored her It's Over Nine Thousand which I should be excited about, but I'm not. And I find it sad. It's a big deal for me to reach that threshold, but I wasn't as excited about getting as I thought I would be. Anyway, I'm glad it's done. I wonder how many achievement points I'll have in total once Mists merges all my characters achievements together. Hopefully somewhere close to 10k. *fingers crossed*

I transferred my Death Knight over to the server and haven't done much with her since, except farm stuff, like crocs tails to level cooking, because Howling Blast all the things is amazing to kill mobs quickly. Plus, Death Grip really comes in handy when you're lazy and don't want to run aallll the way over there. I think my DK is as lazy as me.

So the plan for this week is to keep leveling the lock as much as possible while the Midsummer Festival's XP buff is still around. I'll also be hitting the Raid Finder with the hunter for a trinket, and the shaman to get her a new weapon, as she is still rocking a blue axe. After that, I'll be pretty much done with the bucket list, apart from the Loremaster stuff which I probably won't even touch before MoP. Unless I get really bored. Which will most probably happen if Blizz doesn't hurry up already and give us something. Anything really. Just something new to do. Soon. Please?

Until then I guess I'll read, watch TV shows and hope for the pandas to arrive. 

Quick Post : It's mine

I've been farming Sethekk Halls for a little less than two months, and today, I was rewarded with this beauty. I'm so glad I finally got it. It's absolutely gorgeous. 

This has been a productive week for my bucket list. I think this weekend I'll slow down and just level the warlock some more, grind heroics to try and gear the shaman, and run the LFR on a couple toons. Which is a terrible idea, because it seems all the bads come out during the weekend. What can I say, I guess I'm a sucker for punishment.

Quick Post : Engineering is the best profession.

The lock hit level 60 today, and was able to start using this beauty. You know you want one.

The plan is to have the lock hit 75 before next month's Darkmoon Faire. 15 more levels to go, and 12 days left. This could actually be doable. Although tomorrow I'm taking a break from the Warlock to work on the shaman with the boyfriend. And then more heroic grinding to gear her up for the raid finder. So much to do! But since we still have no news about MoP's release date, I figure that once I'm done with all the things I want to do, I'll still have some time to take some kind of break from WoW before the "must-level-all-the-characters-to-90" begins.

Until then, I still have a shitload of stuff to do. But still. I'd prefer to know when Mists is coming so I can plan accordingly. And I'm impatient as fuck.

Turtles, sharks and dragons.

I've been waiting forever for the bf to finally have time to sit down and level his dk to 80 (because I'm impatient and leveled my shaman without him for a while), so that we could start the Cataclysm zones together and eventually reach 85. He was level 72 when he started, and painfully made it to 74 the first night. Then he skipped a day, saying that Northrend was boring, and promised to make more levels the next day. Once he reached level 77, yet again painfully, I was way too impatient to wait yet another day. So while he was napping, I logged onto his account and went questing in Sholazar Basin. Less than two hours later, he was level 79. He woke up, logged back onto his account, and gleefully did some random dungeons until he hit 80.

And then we went to Vashj'ir. We had decided to skip Hyjal this time, mostly because I had just done it on the pally and didn't feel like doing it yet again, but more importantly because we had never finished the zone before. Back in december 2010, when Cata had just launched, we did half the zone before quitting, for many reasons. (It's not enough that I often get lost horizontally, in Vashj'ir, you can get lost vertically?!?) So we went there, and were mostly alone the whole time. 

Some sharks try to eat you...

...and some let you surf on their back!

It was a lot of fun to see some new quests, and some of them are pretty fun. I particularly enjoyed riding a shark and eating Nagas. That was fun. We still have about 40 quests to go for the achievement, but there are probably more than 40 quests to do in Vashj'ir at this point.

So now my shaman is level 83, and Mad's dk is 82. We stopped questing when we reached the guild reputation cap. We could have kept going, but Mad really hates questing, and will only do the bare minimum. And since we're after guild rep to buy heirloom leather helms for our future monks, losing potential guild reputation was a big deal. So now we wait for Tuesday. Hopefully, they will both hit 85 before Midsummer Festival begins next Thursday. 

I also worked on my leatherworking and went farming leather in Hyjal, on the dragonkins of Sethrias's Roost. I must be completely batshit crazy but I had fun killing those mini dragons and skinning them. 

Last night was definitely a good night. Can't wait for Tuesday to keep going!

Tuwtle!

Patience wearing thin

Cassie the pally finally managed to get some plate pieces to drop from random HoT heroics this weekend, and reached an item level of 374. She had no luck for days, and then one day almost everything dropped for her, and she was able to queue for the Raid Finder. Her dps isn't as good as I'd like it to be, but I didn't get thrown out of a raid so far, and she always managed to stay in the middle of the pack, dps-wise. We did wipe several times on Ultraxxion, which was totally sad, but it wasn't because of my somewhat low dps, but because of people not being able to press a button at the right moment. 

Nonetheless, Cassie got some nice tier shoulders and new boots out of RF Dragon Soul. Now all she'd need would be a trinket, a belt, and possibly another piece of tier so she can get her two set bonus, which makes her judgement give holy power as well. That would be a nice improvement, considering I still struggle with keeping Inquisition up (refreshing it too soon is something I'd like to work on) and using her cooldowns as efficiently as possible. (which I'm getting better at, but generating holy power faster would definitely be a plus.)

I was very happy when Pit Lord Destroyer dropped for her from Well of Eternity, as she was still rockin' an axe from Zul'Aman. Plus, I think it looks really good. I think I might start looking for a transmog set that will match with it. Her gear looks like hell at the moment, as I haven't transmogged it at all since level 80 or so. I'm waiting to see if I can get her some gear in the Raid Finder tomorrow before I go and transmog her, though.

Cassie has also started running Magister's Terrace daily to gain rep with the Shattered Sun Offensive, and for a chance at the mount. It's a lot of fun to gather whole rooms at a time and Divine Storm all the things.

The hunter is still running daily Underbog as well to try and get her last piece of the Giantstalker recolor set. The pants are the last piece missing, and it's been eluding her for days.Hopefully she will get lucky soon. I'm enjoying the daily routine of Sethekk Halls, Underbog, Magister's Terrace, cooking/fishing dailies that I'm rockin' at the moment with a couple characters, but I'm eager to get it all done and just casually level my lock or something for a while. My shaman still needs to reach level 85, and then the grind for gear and leather will start all over again. 

There really needs to be some kind of MoP announcement sometime soon. I'm trying really hard to keep myself busy with stuff in and outside of WoW, but I have very little patience to begin with. 

Keeping busy

I spend all my time lately working on my bucket list. So much to do! And it seems like the list is still as big as when I started. So here's what I did in the last couple days :

The mage is finally done with the rep farming (at least for now). She reached exalted reputation with the Keepers of time saturday and finally finished The Burning Crusader. She got some new tabards, for which I'd love to  find some nice transmog outfits to match. Right.

Keepers of time, the Sha'tar and Thrallmar.

The paladin is now level 83, her mining is maxed out and her Blacksmithing is at 517. Not bad at all! Out of the blue last night, when I realized the Faire was coming at midnight, I decided I had to farm all the things and level BS as much as I could. The DMF gives a free 5 points for your professions, and I wanted to use that 5 point for the last part of BS, those last omg-so-close-but-oh-so-much-mats! points, and not the easy turn-bars-into-X-amount-of-other-things part. 

I levelled her fishing to 300 as well, as she got a Bone Fishing Pole from a daily and couldn't use it before level 300. I'm still hoping the Jeweled Fishing Pole will drop for her, as it would fit better than the Bone one.

I also created a baby warlock this week, and finally decided to roll it as a goblin on a whim. I'd been asking myself for days which race it should be, and then I just picked one and ran with it. To get her ready for the Faire, I leveled all her professions to 75...and then kept going. Engineering and Alchemy are maxed at 225 and 240 respectively, as she can't get farther before level 35. I plan on farming the necessary mats soon, before we get the cross-realm zones and all the goodies get taken by people from other servers.

I had planned on levelling her to 15, so she'd be ready to do some dungeons and quests whenever MoP came out, but I wanted to keep doing the cooking and fishing dailies until then, so I levelled her to 20 and bought her mount. Running around Orgrimmar killing boars for their bacon or stealing rice from the trolls really sucks when you're on foot.

The shaman surprised me last night, as she decided she wanted the bear mount from the Darkmoon Faire. I had decided I would only go after the pets, but change of plans I guess! There's no way I'll get it this month though, but I'm confident I can get it in July. So I thought only the lock would need to do her dailies this week, but turns out I have two toons that will be running them! To get the shamy more tickets, I've decided to level her archaeology to 75 so she can do the monthly quest as well. It's only worth 3 tickets a month, but it's better than nothing. It'll save me 6 dailies somewhere!

Levelling Archaeology on a shamy really is no fun when you don't have insta-cast Ghost Wolf. At least on my mage I have blink. But I did get a rare, which is kinda cool even if I wish I had gotten it on the mage. (Sigh) It gave her a title (her first one), Assistant Professor. Doesn't quite fit, but it'll do for now.

It feels like I've done a lot, but the list still goes on! The druid is still running Sethek Halls daily for the Raven Lord, but no luck so far. The pally should be 85 this week, if all goes according to plan. I still need to work on professions a bit, but I need to get the pally and shaman to 85 asap, in part because I want to gear them somewhat before the next expansion (more gear means the mobs die faster!), and because I want to be able to queue for the Midsummer holiday boss in less than three weeks! I love how all those things keep me busy until we get new content, but I swear when I'm done, I won't farm anything for as long as I can.

Perspective

I've been pretty busy in game in the last couple of days. I've been working a lot on my bucket list in order to get as much stuff done as possible. And I've had a lot of fun doing it. 

Back in December when I started playing Swtor, I was very bored with WoW. I didn't feel like levelling new toons, the guild I was in was slowly dying, and I just didn't have anything to do in game anymore. Swtor was great, and for three whole months, it made me happy to discover new places, try out different playstyles and get engrossed in my character's stories.

But then, in the fourth month, when everyone started talking about Mists of Pandaria beta, I started missing WoW. I hadn't logged on in a couple of weeks, and I decided to give it another try. In a matter of minutes, Swtor became inadequate. Insufficient.

So my time in Swtor just made me realize how much I love WoW, and how much stuff I enjoy doing in Azeroth. Ever since I came back, I've been farming, levelling, raiding with the Raid Finder, gearing up my characters, and just having a blast. 

This week, I've farmed cloth in Tol Barad and in Icecrown to make bigger bags for my characters, and for some reason, it didn't bore me to tears. I actually enjoyed it and had a couple sessions of "farm all the cloth!" I also farmed elementals in Wintergrasp to gather mats for my blacksmith. I ran BC dungeons for hours to work on my reputations. Working on professions and achievements is suddenly entertaining, when a couple of months ago, it felt like a chore. I levelled fishing in a couple days, and it seemed to go fast! Admittedly, I was watching Supernatural on my second monitor the whole time. I never tire of looking at Dean.

But I digress.

I've levelled my paladin to a whoopin' level 75, and have tanked a couple of dungeons. I'm glad I can't get Nexus or Utgard Keep anymore as randoms because I'm sick of those. They are the only dungeons you can get for something like four levels. Old Kingdom turned out to be fairly chaotic. Especially the first boss. Many mobs, handle it! I think I'm doing a good job, though. I sometimes pull a bit more than I can chew, but not on purpose, honest. And we always survive. Either I'm decent at tanking, or I always get great healers. Maybe a little bit of both? Ya, that's good for my self-esteem. Drak'tharon Keep was a lot of fun to tank,  even with a dk trying to tank everything, and a healer drooling over the fact that I was a girl tank. Sigh. When I got Violet Hold, I was like "Nice! Never tanked this before!" And then I remembered. And I had a tiny moment of "Oh God what was I thinking?" But it went well. The group was on the second boss when I walked in. Maybe I should consider getting an offspec for my paladin, but I've been prot since level 10, and I'm not a fan of ret. I haven't quested since level 15, either. I kinda like the idea of having only one spec. If I even just buy her dual spec, I know I'm gonna end up healing or some shit like that and I really don't want that to happen.

Finally, my cutie druid got lots and lots of gear from the Raid Finder. If I could get my hands on a trinket and the staff off of Deathwing, I would be thrilled. There was a trinket I desperately wanted for my mage, and it took months before I won the roll. My druid? Got it on her first try. What's this, Blizz? Is this your way of telling me I should play my druid more? Message received. Loud and clear.

My end-of-expansion bucket list

I've seen several bloggers make a bucket list for all the things they want to do in game. Aralosseien over at Achievements Ahoy has made a list (back in january, I know, I'm late to the party) of a couple bloggers who made one. I love bucket lists, and I feel it helps to get ready for the incoming expansion. So I decided to make my very own bucket list. It can be found here as a permanent page for easier updates on my progress. (It's actually been there for quite a while, but I decided to make a post about it.)

I want to do all those things before MoP is released, but I probably won't. I sometimes go crazy and score a lot of achievements, grind rep and farm stuff like there's no tomorrow, then I get burned out and stop for months. I've been trying to go slowly this time and do just a little bit of grinding each week so I can get things done. There are still several weeks if not months before the pandas get here, so I think I can realistically get at least a good chunk of those done before MoP, and the rest after. It doesn't really matter when I do it. I always get sidetracked anyway and end up doing something completely different. The point is to have fun, after all.

Druid

- Farm the Raven Lord from Anzu. (Yay for stealth!)

- Get a cute RP outfit for fishing or hanging out in Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff.

- Find a good transmog set. (or two...)

- Level fishing to 525. (250)

- Gear her up to at least 378 ilvl. (375)

Hunter
- Finish Loremaster of Northrend (Zul'Drak, Icecrown, Storm Peaks.)
- Get a Darkmoon cub or balloon.
- Get two trinkets from the Raid Finder.

Mage
- Finish The Oceanographer. (Winter Squid)
- Farm Embersilk cloth.
- Make enough 22 slot bags for all my level 85 toons' inventories and banks.
- Make a couple Hyjal Expedition Bags for the druid.
- Finish What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been. (Midsummer Festival)
- Complete The Burning Crusader. (Thrallmar, Lower City, Keepers of Time, The Sha'tar)
- Raise 35 reputations to exalted. (31)
- Finish Loremaster of Cataclysm (Vashj'ir - about 75 quests.)
- Finish Loremaster of Outland (Blade's Edge Mountain, Shadowmoon Valley, Netherstorm.)
- Complete Loremaster of Kalimdor.
- Complete Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms.
- Complete 3000 quests and get the Seeker title. (2096)
- Get a Darkmoon turtle.
- Get tier 4 set for transmog.

Paladin
- Level to 85. (70)
- Level mining to 525. (390)
- Level blacksmithing to 525. (375)
- Get a Darkmoon cub.
- Gear her up to at least 378 ilvl.
- Reach exalted reputation with Shattered Sun Offensive; buy the tabard, title and shields.
- Get tier 6 set for transmog.

Shaman
- Level to 85. (72)
- Level skinning to 525. (448)
- Level leatherworking to 525. (400)
- Level fishing to 525. (94)
- Farm the Giantstalker recolor set for transmog.
- Gear her up to at least 378 ilvl.

General
- Try to level a warlock and not give up at 40 like the last five times (or six, or seven....)
- Buy the heirloom leather helms from the guild vendor.
- Find a good name for my future panda lady and pick her professions.
- Level engineering on a character. Any character. 'Cause... goggles.
- Transfer my warrior and death knight over to the new server. At some point. Maybe.
- Get the warrior some tank gear and try tanking.

I think that's all for now. I might update it if I ever find something else I want to do. It's quite a big list, and it should keep me busy for a good while. I have to say I'm really excited for account wide achievements, as I notice I have a lot of stuff done on different characters. My mage is sitting at around 8600 achievement points right now, and I'm pretty sure when they all get merged, I will hit Over Nine Thousand, if not more. This list would be a lot longer if I wasn't counting on some titles and rewards to be available to my alts in a couple months.

For example, I wanted to get the Guardian of Cenarius title for my druid, and the Argent Champion title for my paladin, but since my mage already got those, I decided to wait and see if it will be given to all my characters in MoP before re-farming it all. Would really hate to waste time doing it again for nothing.

Planning the levelling

I was reading The Grumpy Elf's last post and it made me think.

When MoP comes, I'll probably level my mage first. She was my second 70, my first 80 and my first 85. It goes without saying by now.

But by that time, I'll (hopefully) have five or six 85's waiting to reach the level cap, and that's only on my "main" realm. I probably will level all my characters to 90 at some point. Because I love levelling.

Here is how I plan to level my characters. Most likely in this order.

Mage : Mostly through quests and dungeons. I'll probably run each dungeons at least once, for the quests. I'll also do as much Archaeology as I can. Because I hear it's good xp. And I can always go back and do the quests after I've reached the level cap. Moar munies. This character will be leveled up with one of Mad's characters. So I'll have to wait for him. 

Druid : Gathering plants until I get sick of it and then some more. Depending on which day the launch is, I might start this right away. If Mad is working, I'll spend every moment I can picking flowers.

Hunter : Mostly through quests and dungeons. 

Shaman : Questing. Maybe some dungeons. I want to skin ALL THE THINGS. So I guess questing is better than running dungeons.

Death Knight : Questing. Occasional dungeon.

As for my paladin, I'm not sure yet what to do with her. There's a guild on my server that is for 70's only. I might turn off her xp for a while. Whenever I feel like doing some BC stuff, I will have a toon ready! I've never really did endgame content in BC. This could be fun.

And the rest of my toons will be levelled after that, when I get bored with the ones I have, or just because I feel like levelling something. Of course, a panda monk will be rolled somewhere in there. At some point.

And following The Grumpy Elf's advice, the moment the expansion goes live, I will log on all my characters so they can start building up rested xp. It won't hurt. I don't know yet if I'll level multiple characters or just one at a time. It's a good idea to just switch whenever your run out of rested xp, but I want to have at least one 90 before switching to another toon. 

Now let's wait and see in a couple months if I'll follow this or not.